Good Grape Wine Company

TABASCO: An Illustrated History is the first and only book about the McIlhenny family and company based on previously untapped documents in the McIlhenny Company Archives. This chronicle examines the origin of TABASCO sauce, from its post-Civil War creation on Avery Island, Louisiana, to its evolution into the "gold standard" of pepper sauces and a global culinary icon.

It also examines the often stranger-than-fiction stories that are inexorably bound up with the rise of TABASCO--Edmund McIlhenny's creation of the sauce in the midst of Reconstruction-era economic ruin; John Avery McIlhenny's adventures in Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders volunteer cavalry regiment; Edward Avery McIlhenny's explorations in the unforgiving Arctic; and Walter S. McIlhenny's amazing heroics in World War II, which eventually secured him the rank of brigadier general, even as he modernized his family business and ensured its success into the late Twentieth century.

In addition to the central narrative, TABASCO: An Illustrated History contains numerous detailed sidebars, as well as over a dozen historical recipes selected from handwritten McIlhenny family cookbooks and other archival sources. This book boasts hundreds of fascinating photographs, both in color and black-and-white, many of which are previously unpublished.

Shane K. Bernard is historian and curator for the McIlhenny Company and Avery Island, Inc., Archives. He is the author of Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues; The Cajuns: Americanization of a People; and Cajuns and Their Acadian Ancestors: A Young Reader's History (all from University Press of Mississippi).